November 17, 2012

But that idealized university no longer exists. It was wiped out in the 1990s by administrators, diversity hustlers and liability-management professionals, who were often abetted by professors committed to political agendas.

"What's disappointing and rightfully scorned," Mr. Lukianoff says, "is that in some cases the very professors who were benefiting from the free-speech movement turned around to advocate speech codes and speech zones in the 1980s and '90s."

Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes....

At Western Michigan University, it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." That just about sums up the line "I think of all Harvard men as sissies" (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 novel "This Side of Paradise"), a quote that was banned at Yale when students put it on a T-shirt.

More examples like that at the link — which goes to the Wall Street Journal — and in Lukianoff's book "Unlearning Liberty." There's video too at the link, displayed with this unintended freeze-frame humor:

49 comments:

My wife's employer, a non-profit suffers from the same problem. They have no interest at all in diversity, they want only to enforce political consequences. In an employment setting, running against that is suicice.

There was a parade of black women defending Rice and they were berating the Republicans as going after women and minorities. They learn from their master. Race thing under Obama has got that much more insidious. He is aided and abetted by the white guilt, political correctness, diversity crowd at the universities. The students are even taught to cheat the system to get this man elected and they are OK with that.

For many leftist academics, it was never about "academic freedom," it was and is simply about "Who - whom?" Now that they have sufficient power, they are able to drop the pretense of being interested in debate.

I agree with Jeffery. The hard edge of the '60s student protests was as much or more about shouting down opposing views and speakers as it was about free speech. It set in motion the tactics of today's speech codes.

I even wonder to what extent the quote which forms the title of this post is actually true?

There is a large strain of this intolerance in the name of "tolerance" that started during the Donna Shalala era at UW Madison.

The left has never been about free speech. Only their speech.

For a modern day example, look at the You Tube filmmaker. He sits in jail courtesy of Obama and Hillary. A goofy 12 minute video clip and he is falsely convicted by a US President for deaths of Americans worldwide.

Again where is the ACLU on this? Russ Feingold? Bruce Springsteen and Sean Penn? Where are the "free the filmaker" tee shirts on the Madison campus. Crickets.

This is very old news, but still it's good that a little of it is leaking out. At my old alma mater, Wesleyan, the main technique has been to demand "civility,""respect" and freedom from hostile environment. They have scrapped (partly because of federal intimidation) all pretense of due process in student judicial procedures, especially in matters of so called sexual assault and harassment. The school openly boasts of being a community of "like minded" people, and self selection, hiring practices and admissions practices create a population which is, at the very least, receptive to indoctrination.

Yeah, I wish that were true also. Perhaps after many generations it does. But the USSR held together for 80 years with Political Correctness (they literally used that term).

Yes, if we are to be true conservatives, we must accept the lessons of history. Identity politics (race, religion, ethnicity) has almost always trumped everything else, in all ages. There are some solid biological reasons for this by the way. People have genetic interests, family interests, etc.

No one educated in the decade between 1965 to 1975 should be surprised. Did anyone believe their New Left classmates were going to exercise tolerance when the Old Left turned over control of the universities. The Old Left's biggest criticism of the New Left was one of aesthetics, would they be taken seriously with the hippy attire after rejecting the Andover Shop/J.Press tradition.Only a fool ever believed the "free speech" movement on campuses was about tolerance, it was about allowing the New Left to scream Nazi or racist in the face of non conformist fellow students in the classroom.

While not academia, to compare Old Left with New Left, compare how an Old Left Walter Concrite interviews serious conservatives and New Left Chris Mathews interviews one.

I went to college in the 70s, and I never had any professor in any class attempt to push any political position on us, or to declare that this politician was "bad" and that one "good," or any such thing.

We dealt with the subject matter of the class and nothing else. Even a class I had in comparative governments dealt strictly with the differences in organization of goverments around the world, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of which from an organzational point of view were discussed dispassionately.

Such talk comes from people who never went to college or who are so locked into their own reality tunnels that they can look at someone like, for example, Barack Obama, and see a "socialist."

When I hear someone make that assertion I know they don't exist in the real world.

I've never forgotten my introduction to leftist "free speech" on the UW Madison campus. Sometime in the early 1980s, Eldridge Cleaver attempted to present his contrarian views but was successfully shouted down by campus activists. I think this set the precedent for lefties attempting or threatening to do the same up to the present day.

And the most spoiled. They have been the richest generation in the history of the planet, but they still couldn't live within their means.

They are practicing their religion of me-first, and in so many varried ways are sacrificing their children on its alter

And their way of practicing politics only makes sense when you understand that those who have adopted the post modern worldview don't scream "racist" and "sexist" and "homophobe" becaue they want equality.

The scream it becaue they want absolute power.

Post modernism is not a worldview that can be reasoned with to find the proper common groupd.

In their minds, there is no common "right" ground - there is no independent truth and justice and fairness we're all trying to discover.

In their minds, the only meaning of anything is that it is a tool to preserve, attack, gain, and weild power against the other.

Robert Cook: I went to college in the 70s, and I never had any professor in any class attempt to push any political position on us, or to declare that this politician was "bad" and that one "good," or any such thing.

Well, then, it didn't happen to you, so it didn't happen. The rest of us who went to college in the '70s must be suffering from false memory syndrome.

Nice quip from one of the commenters at the linked article:

"Ah! The universities of America. From Animal House to Animal Farm in just 30 years."

I went to a small, private Catholic college, and I didn't notice a lot of indoctrination going on around me. But, then again, I stuck to a basic script: Disagree in class discussion, but during essays/papers, hew and parrot the instructor's beliefs back at them.

Those bastards tolerated no dissent on anything, although the one high point of my undergrad days was hearing Whiskey Company (our NROTC drill team) beat the living Hell out of the SDS chapter selling Viet Cong savings stamps.

Robert CookThe New Left hadn't taken over the universities in the 70s, they were your classmates. That was part of my point, my Marxist econ professors never denied their Marxism, same in the humanities, but they were Old Left academics, they enjoyed the discussion, they didn't screw you for disagreement, they didn't harass you.

Quayle: And their way of practicing politics only makes sense when you understand that those who have adopted the post modern worldview don't scream "racist" and "sexist" and "homophobe" becaue they want equality.

The scream it becaue they want absolute power.

The ones who want power do. But I'd bet most of the sheep going along with each new day's ever more hysterical bigot-hater-phobe witch hunt are just people who were raised and live in a moral and cultural vacuum. (The funny thing is that they have become the mindless moral fanatics they were propagandized into believing were hiding under every bed.)

I don't understand how people can give these universities their children, and their life savings to be subjected to such an atmosphere, people, and ideas, just to get something which is mostly valued for what it isn't.

I pray for the advance of open, online education, which is already available for free with just a little self discipline.

I can imagine designing a personal curriculum with a series of tests, assignments, monetary rewards and investments, which a parent could create for their child that would educate them better, faster, and far cheaper. It would include an integrated plan of building a self- supporting business in their area of interest and passion. In just a few years a young person could be educated, experienced, and self-employed. The tools are now available. The hardest part would be designing in the discipline. This would be where financial rewards would come in as investments in their plan, paying for expenses, and spending money. Put your resources right into your child, not some stranger who then promises to educate with their own ideas and then just dump them on the market unprepared, and in debt.

Well, over in my unreal world Obama is a socialist. He may not be able to act on it freely, because of the constraints of our political system, but if he was free to do whatever he wanted he would have the government take over everything that is not working the way he wants it to.

His administration and policy is not and can't be flat out socialist, but the man, in his background, education, friendships, influences and personal history is a democratic socialist in the European mold where they have no problem calling themselves socialists when they share the exact same beliefs and goals as he does.

Obama is a socialist in his policy as much as an American President can get away with today, and he intends to push the envelope as much as possible. If he was European, nobody would have any problem calling him a socialist.

Yet 50% of people who identify as Catholics voted for Obama. With apologies to commenter Father Martin, who I enjoy reading, and who has also proferred a theory that most of these 50% are likely lapsed Catholics who only go to Easter and Christmas masses; I have to say many Catholics are incredibly stupid for voting against their own beliefs. They might as well switch to anything-goes Unitarianism.

"I don't understand how people can give these universities their children"

At present, there are few other options. But I have sent 3 to these diploma mills, but only after 18 years of pointing out how the teachers are lying socialist bastards not to be trusted except in meting out technical advice (e.g., how to do graphic design).

I taught them that their politics is poison, evil, twisted, hateful. And I'm sorry for sending them to these assholes but they run everything and that's that.

They seemed to have gotten through unscathed, via preference falsification. Lie to the bastards, I told them, because they believe it, they're so goddamn stupid.

Then make your own way. Leave the state or the country if you must, for freedom.

If you look at leftists as the spawn of Bolsheviks, whose goal is absolute power by appealing to the people's basest instincts of fear, envy, class distinction, and identity politics, their actions make total sense.

It matters not what they say. They are true post modernists who do not believe in objective truth, only in advancing their political narrative. (Thus we see the outrage over the Valerie Plame non story and the shoulder shrugging toward Benghazi, and other examples we all know and are too numerous to mention).

Without objective truth there is no morality, only feigned indignation meant to shame political opponents.

Without truth and morality there is only a will to power. That is the rump of humanity left in these devolved people, and what makes them dangerous.

We are watching the slow takeover of America from the inside by people whose beliefs can all trace their pedigree to Soviet intellectuals. We are losing the cold war, even decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, just as an AIDS patient succumbs to the HIV virus long after the demise of the infecting agent.

Lefties like Cookie, or even the naive and simple Inga, are useful idiots and blissfully unaware that they are agents for the destruction of liberty, prosperity, and ultimately civilization itself. They imagine that they are a moral vanguard for the "progress" of a humane, top down "Good Government" administered society.

The thing to understand about the tenured radicals is that they're not hypocrites. They're only acting in accordance with the original layer down of the rules for radicals, Rousseau, who stated that once the mythical "people" have arrived at the correct positions on social policy (by way of the intellectual Rousseaun class of course) well, that's it, the popular will is known and no further speech is required. In fact to speak against the popular will is, and can only be, hateful.

The constant race-baiting from the Left is having exactly the opposite effect its practitioners at least putatively desire. White people are getting the message loud and clear that they are considered incorrigible racists no matter what they do or say. A lot of them are thinking, all right, in for a penny, in for a pound. When things really collapse (as seems predestined) they will be more tribalist than even the most radical racial scab-picker ever contemplated. I think the strength of the preference cascade, when it comes, will truly astonish the petty tyrants of the racial grievance mongering industry.

What Skookum said.For most of my life, certainly through my adolescence and twenties, I heard very few racist remarks from any of my peers. In the last few years though I am amazed at the number of young people I encounter, many of them Obama supporters, who freely voice racist comments and generalities. They would laugh at you if you suggested they were racist. It's as if Obama's election has absolved them of racism and thereby left them free to be racist. The next 20 years are going to be interesting. When the whole racket collapses there's going to be some spectacular blowback.

It's true Rousseau was the father of socialism and the first post modern philosopher, but it was the subversion of the Soviets that directly injected our culture with the Marxist Anti-American sentiment that has taken over academia, the media, Hollywood, etc.

"Well, then, it didn't happen to you, so it didn't happen. The rest of us who went to college in the '70s must be suffering from false memory syndrome."

I didn't say that. But the belief--oft asserted here--that American colleges are rife with hordes--er, cadres--of radical leftist professors inculcating students with Marxist teachings or interpretations of history is a fantasy absurd on its face. Such notions are of a kind with the traditional American parochialism that disdains "pointy-headed intellectuals" and "eggheads."

I wonder if this builds upon what is going on before college. Ed schools are the most PC places on campus, teaching not only teaching techniques and such, but also teaching teachers how to create well socialized boys and girls (socialized to the Left's standards of not offennding).

Among the middle class and up, there has also been a trend toward being over-protective among parents. Those beloe 35 or so don't recall a world before child seats, bike helmets, etc. The younger generation has been socialized away from risk taking.

That aside, it is certainly true that in my entire adult life, I have never had *less* freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, or freedom of association than I had during the years spent in the University of California system.

Yes, you did. Really, Cookie, how lazy can you be to not just scroll up and refresh your memory on your own comments?

But the belief--oft asserted here--that American colleges are rife with hordes--er, cadres--of radical leftist professors inculcating students with Marxist teachings or interpretations of history is a fantasy absurd on its face. Such notions are of a kind with the traditional American parochialism that disdains "pointy-headed intellectuals" and "eggheads."

No, what is oft-asserted here is that the universities are monolithically liberal, and hostile to students and scholars who contest that world view -something that is obvious to any honest observer. Your little quibble about whether they are technically "Marxist" in interpretation is just another of your typical dishonest maneuvers - "look over here! That professor is not a Marxist! What leftist bigotry and censorship in our universities?"

Such notions are of a kind with the traditional American parochialism that disdains "pointy-headed intellectuals" and "eggheads."

Yes, we know the drill. Just define anyone who disagrees with you as "anti-intellectual", and then sit satisfied that your merest huffy assertions are dispositive.